Creativity, role-play, team-work and active involvement of students…  You will find all these in this guest post that Gokce Uluscu, an EFL teacher and an EdTech enthusiast, sent us. She tells how her students wrote their own scripts and created their own video to revise the events in the class reader and the vocabulary they previously learnt in class.

Here is the step-by-step guide for the activity

• First, I reflected the instructions on the board and let the students understand what the expectations and objectives were.

• After the groups were set, I gave them popsicle sticks (rulers would also do), character cards from the class reader, some sticky tags to stick the cards to the popsicle sticks, 10 vocabulary flashcards to each group, and one handout to each student. The students chose a specific scene from the book, then they picked their character cards accordingly.

• Then, they chose the vocabulary flashcards, since they were supposed to use at least four vocabulary words in their scripts. The next part was preparing the materials by deciding on the flashcards and sticking the cards on the sticks.

• I placed the groups in different parts of the classroom for them to work separately and in a comfortable way. 

• The groups went to their places, decided on the scene and started filling in the handout in which the group mates’ names, the characters, and the video script was written. Then, the video recording started. They used the sticks in front of the camera and they vocalised the characters. One of the students was the narrator.

What made it great

The role-play and the video challenge were absolutely more motivating than just writing a summary of a chapter. Also, the use of visual tools made it more engaging. The technology was quite effortless since it did not require apps or any other complicated tools other than a media player on the students’ Ipads.

You can follow Gokce on Instagram (@educatedwatermelon) for creative English Language Teaching ideas, techniques and ideas.

P.S: This activity was planned and delivered by Gokce and her colleagues. Kudos to all the creative teachers! 🙂